Tag Archives: Concept

If you don’t already know…DEADPOOL is awesome. While often confused with, the not as cool, Spiderman…he is not Spidey. DEADPOOL is awesome.

Via Wikipedia: Deadpool is a disfigured and mentally unstable mercenary with the superhuman ability of an accelerated healing factor. He is known as the “Merc with a Mouth” because of his talkative nature and tendency to break the fourth wall, which is used by writers to humorous effect.

This fangirl is totally excited about the movie and if you are not… I will be personally offended … (Just kidding… maybe…) When I messaged Michelle about possibly working with me on this shoot – which I may have done while on a cappuccino buzz and bouncing like a toddler with to many gummi bears- I was freaking excited. Michelle was all for it.

Michelle is who brought on Rebecca as our model. Let me tell you, this girl, she is amazing. They both humored me as I ranted about DEADPOOL and made then watch clips release from the movie…coming out next year. It just made me <3 them even more.

What was once the titled the “New Years Shoot” or “Alien-But like the Jetsons” or ” The Futuristic Thing We are Doing!”, finally became FUSION, when Genna randomly said “I like the name FUSION. And so it was…

There are many ways to look at this. We can look at is as we as artist like to project what we want on the world. Project our ideas and thoughts in to our work. It is our view. Right now I am feeling very “Artsy Fartsy” and wish there was some super huge message in this series.

When really. I just wanted to take travel photos that I have shot and put them into my Creative Model work. That’s it. This style and concept has been done many many times, but I wanted to be able to tie this in further. Make it personal.

With the help of some pretty awesome people this finally came all together. Originally I wanted this to be a nudes series. It was super difficult to find willing models and well after much frustration I gave up. This series probably would have turned out much different had I gone that route. Almost a year later I had worked with Genna Yussman Greene, she is a very talented designer. I just adore everything about her. It took me a bit to get the courage up and ask her if she had a white outfit for me to shoot this. She ended up graciously providing me three outfits, pretty much no questions asked.

After I received the clothes I decided it would be awesome (That is todays word. AWESOME.) to separate them out into three different shoots. Three different looks. Three different models.

First was Kesley in the funky tasseled dress. She was really the true test subject. I had no clue what I was doing. I would actually bring up the image in photoshop on top of Kesley and photoshop white over her face to allow for more of the projectors light to make it way to her face. I had to find the balance between the projector and loosing her features and making her blend in.

Rebecca’s shoot was scheduled next and we had a dress with a train. I love dresses with attachments and things to play with and …. we played. Rebecca always humors me and we have a blast. There were many times that I just looked confused. We found out that some dark images looked weird when projected. Also after the first I learned my camera would actually capture the color change as it happened. So I took multiple pictures of every pose to ensure I wouldn’t end up with a green face.

Wardrobe – Construction and Design: Genna Yussman

Model: Rebecca Denfip

Photography: Photographs Humans – Jami Guess

The images seen projected on to Rebecca are: (Left to right)Wall with Ovals – Downtown Louisville, KentuckyEscalator- Convention Center in Atlanta During the Great Ice Storm (Tells you how bored I was… Look and escalator!)Clouds and Land Scape – Guess Farm Princeton, KentuckyInner area of the Eiffel Tower – Paris, France.

During Seteena’s shoot we decided she has magic hair, it literally will do anything and she is just as awesome as her magic hair! I adore her. She was willing to do anything. This shoot really looks like it is easy, but in fact it is rough on the body. Having to hold positions while I worked in photoshop to lighten and edit areas of the images, while the model has to stand there. My ADD alone wouldn’t allow for that!

This shoot was a long time in planning. Genna had asked me awhile back to shoot her “Lady of the Sea” dress. You may recognize it, as it won a ribbon in a textile category in the Kentucky State Fair.

Our scheduling had it’s own demons…. demons called weather. It seemed no matter how hard we tried, we always ended up rescheduling for the cold temperatures or down right ice and snow. I wanted the grounds to be mostly brown and dead to give it a dark feel. We originally wanted to do it late fall/early winter. I reaaaaallllly wanted the set/location to look dead to give the scene a dead sea/dark lagoon feel, so a bright springy day would not give me what I was seeing in my mind.

In March we finally had our opportunity! It worked well enough, thanks to Kentucky’s weird weather I had enough lack of growth to pull off the look I wanted for the shoot.

Usually I go into a shoot with a vague idea of what I want the final images to look like. For Lady of the Sea I had an exact outcome I wanted to achieve. I wanted a book cover. Yep, a book cover. Science fiction at sea. I wanted it to feel purple. Don’t ask me what purple feels like…moody maybe?

I have had this spot on the farm that I wanted to use for years, the theme/feel of the shoot never was appropriate and well, the growth was to much. For our shoot, I kept thinking I can make this look like an edge of a cliff and put water in and make it look like a lookout over a sea, dark and creepy. I wasn’t even sure I could pull it off in post editing. I had hoped.

Along the way we may have broken a few – Maaaybe.. “most” of the head height…- branches so that we didn’t have to worry about them getting caught up in Ashley’s hair, but it worked out perfect

Most of my clients know I am a bit all over the place during sessions -like this blog- and typically I am like that when we shoot.

There is a lot of this:

Brandy styling Ashley’s hair.

and this:

Sitting, waiting, more sitting and chatting.

When we do finally get to the location, we had to walk through the fields, due to the ground being so wet that cars would have gotten stuck, there was a bunch of time used getting the spot right and discussing where not to step.

You can see me standing on the edge here. Eric took the photo. I was thinking “How close can I get her to the edge, keeping it safe, while not blocking her with dead growth?”

Then the actual magic happens. Lots of me looking confused and running back and forth. I like to use as little gear as possible. At most we had two speed-lights on stands as well as a little…. natural light. Variety is key for on location, and lighter gear makes it easier to move about!

This shot is actually full natural light with a massive amount of editing.70-200 mm 2.8 @ 70mm

This has one light over head slightly to the right of the subject. I used the Westcott Rapid Box for this image and it worked wonderfully.70-200 mm 2.8 @ 86mm

I am so bad with dates, I had to go back and figure out when I shot these. It was in early 2011! This originated with a friend who basically said, “Hey, You want to shoot where all the old Vegas signs are!?!”, and went from there. I had no clue how popular it was to shoot there.

We spend a good portion of the day having hair and makeup done by the amazing Sabrina Tannehill. She was a hoot and did a fabulous job! Her husband, Will, was also an amazing assistant/helper. I think we all were mutually amused by his antics.

Kelsi, my model, was a super trouper too. I had styled the outfit. I found the most amazing dress with a pink plaid skirt, but it was in a size 12. Kelsi… is/was no where near a 12. However I kept thinking it was to much plaid… Then it came to me. A corset over it! It would require no stitch work and would fit her no matter what. Kelsi was in Vegas, I was in Louisville, Kentucky, there was no way I could go and do a fitting before hand.

Vegas Tip: Check out how much a limo vs cab, would cost. In out instance it was much cheaper to use a limo, then it was to get two cab and have them wait for us.

Once we got there and realized we would have a “Keeper” with us, watching myself and another photographer shoot.

Imagine going to a location and being told you can not touch anything and had your own personal “Keeper” to follow you around. However, we made sure to rock it with out touching anything.

I got nervous. I had no intentions of doing anything inappropriate, but I hate being WATCHED! It is the whole, Why are you looking over my shoulder??!??!, thing. It makes me super nervous, like I am on stage. I hate being in front of people on show. I felt like I was in a cage being watched at a zoo. However, Will managed to work out a simple way of telling me when our Keeper was near by, since the Keeper was watching over us both. It helped me relax.

We ended up with a bit over an hour to shoot. When scheduling we had gotten super lucky to be able to shoot at dusk.

A few weeks ago a local came over and we talked about her shooting a test shoot/application shoot for the Suicide Girls. They are a super alternative site with beautiful sexy women. Some of the images on the site are waaaaay out there. Further, then I would ever go. However we started talking about an on location shoot and then it melded into something theme-ish and fun.

I kept looking at her blue hair and awesome glasses and we came up with Super Girl. It was meant to be a hint of theme, just enough to be obvious and not scream SUPERMAN. Some images…especially with the undies are obvious….

I decided to go with a newspaper background. I love texture and adore when it breaks the light. It took Husband and I about an hour to get the newspaper on the wall. We did our best to not have to many large text headlines or bold graphics right behind her head. At first the side panels were more of a stage curtain and it was driving me nuts. I hated how it was effecting the light. So I moved it back and taped the edges to the existing newspaper on the wall. This made the wall bend forward, allowing for the contrast and shadowing with out making it have sharp vertical line shadows.

Fun Fact #2: The stool that shows up in a few images, has actually set outside at a farm for years. I didn’t want anything extremely shiny to reflect and take your eyes off the model.

While shooting I went with dramatic lighting it was rare that I actually placed the light right in front of her. We also had to watch for the glasses leaving shadows and blocking the eyes.

I used a 24-70 2.8 to photograph this session. I rarely use anything else, unless I want the extreme shallow depth of field. For this is was a perfect lens. I also used the warping while zooming to make her 5foot frame look taller. I love her natural curves and tattoos, so we totally used these in our favor!

Super Girl • Photographs Humans

Model: A.Z.

Makeup & Hair Done by Becca Sturgeon

Set Styling: Photographs Humans

This is what the setup looked like. I blocked out my windows, so that I wouldn’t add light to the background. Also note the space heater! A warm client/model is a happy client/model.

Superman is trademarked and owned by their respective people. I have nothing to do with the brand/trademark.

This is an off shoot of J.Guess Photography, where you can view and enjoy the other side…specifically my Concept Art Images and hear more about the actual shoots. From this point forward anything labeled “From The Vault” will be work shot under my previous name and re-released. I feel more comfortable telling stories about art shoots, then I do about my weddings. Weddings are about the clients, it is their day. I photograph it as it is and am there to capture the story, not make the story.

These are stories I have collaborated with other people and have/will bring to life. If your actually reading this at this point, I am impressed. I am not the best writer in the world, in fact I tend to write as I type. In your head just think of this as a 12 year old ADHD child…and you will be on the right path.

•••••••••

For this first Series from the Vault I am bringing out a shoot I completely styled myself. Catherine Jones did an amazing job with Hair and Makeup, sooooo much fake hair had to be purchased for this. It was insane!

Husband helped me greatly as always. He is my main lighting guru, aka he pushes buttons when I tell him too.

The house, at the time, belonged to a friend on mine and we had permission to use the property.

Our mantra for this shoot (I had shot there one other time.) was “Do NOT fall through the floor”. If I remember it was April of 2010 and it had started warming up, I was afraid we may get to meet some raccoons.

Leafy (AKA Oletha Dawn) was our model…she humored me so much. I am grateful to work with so many wonderful people.

Recent Posts

What Interest You?

WARNING: There are Artistic Images, including nudes on this site. If you are not old enough or the Human Body offends you... exit now.

The content you are about to view may be
considered Offensive,
Inappropriate,
Weird and/or Creepy. Art photography has no real limits, other then then imagination. Furthermore, this content may be considered adult content, if you are not of legal age or are easily offended, you are required to click the EXIT/"Get me Out of Here!" button.